Aliza Nisenbaum
NYC
Date TBD
Artist Statement
I was born in Mexico City, and currently based in New York. My paintings are intimate exchanges between my subjects and myself. I makes portraits of undocumented Latin American immigrants, and of other distinct communities, using the focused attention of observational painting to mark those who are socially unmarked in society, along with the apparently anonymous goods that constitute a transnational trade in quotidian objects such as flowers, garments, handcrafts and letters. Often lushly decorated with images of patterned textiles, my canvases demand close looking in keeping with my personal connections to my subjects. My work aims to question different ways in which the flow of people, money, and things are represented in a globalized world. More specifically, I am interested in representations of the exchange that occurs along the Mexican- American border, one of the most fraught and trafficked in the world.
Aliza Nisenbaum (b. 1977, Mexico City) has presented her paintings in solo shows at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Mary Mary, Glasgow; White Columns, New York; Lulu, Mexico City; Julius Caesar, Chicago; and Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago. National and International group exhibitions have included the Whitney Biennial 2017; The Flag Art Foundation; The ICA at MECA, Maine; Biennial of the Americas, MCA, Denver; the Rufino Tamayo Painting Biennial, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City; T-293 gallery, Rome; Hannah Hoffman Gallery LA; Gallerie Nachst St. Stephen Rosemary Shwartzwalder, Austria; Wilkinson Gallery, London; Slopes Gallery, Melbourne, Australia; Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice; Princeton University School of Architecture; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Green Gallery, Yale School of Art; The Poor Farm, Wisconsin; The University of Wisconsin; and The University of Texas at Tyler, among others. She has curated an exhibition named “Intimisms” at James Cohan Gallery in 2016.
Aliza lives and works in New York, and is currently Director of Graduate Studies, and Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University School of the Arts. She received her BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been an artist in residence at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; Artist-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee; and SOMA Summer, Mexico City. Fellowships and grants include the Rema Hort Mann NYC award, and the Fellowship for Immigrant Women Leaders from NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA). She has also been a participating artist at Immigrant Movement International, Corona Park, Queens. She has been widely reviewed, and is included in the book Vitamin P3, New Perspectives in Painting.
Artist Links
https://www.artforum.com/video/id=71371&mode=large
https://www.vogue.com/article/aliza-nisenbaum-artist-immigration-political-portraits
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-aliza-nisenbaum-intimate-portraits-immigrants-empathy
http://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2016/october/26/aliza-nisenbaum-why-i-paint/
http://www.marymarygallery.co.uk/artists/aliza-nisenbaum/
http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/150255/aliza-nisenbauma-place-we-share/
Instagram: @alizanisenbaum